When I had to wash the dishes I done it haphazardly, wash a knife here, wash a dish there and consequently it took me ages to do them and they weren’t done properly.  I was then shown a way to do them which seemed to make the chore less of a chore and I would zip through doing the dishes.  Now I have shown my children how to do the dishes properly they see it as less of a chore as well (no we don’t have a dishwasher thank goodness).  My son said he done his homework the same way  I showed him how to do the dishes, when I asked him to explain I thought the intelligence required to link dishes with doing homework was amazing and I told him so.  Having expanded on it a little more you could apply washing dishes system to anything in life.

How to wash dishes

Pre-preparation

About 10 minutes after dinner, in my house, you’ll always hear me shouting through ‘who’s not rinsed their plate off?’ and one of the boys will come trundling through and rinsing their dinner plate off under the tap.  Rinsing the plate will obviously make washing the dishes a lot easier, especially if they sit for half an hour before they are washed and dried.

So it is with any chore or task, pre-preparation is a good habit to get into.  Imagine you’ve been given a report to write for next week, you have a thousand other things to do so can’t do it right away.  What you can do right away is a little pre-preparation.  You quickly skim the task and find out what it is about and in your mind what you will have to do to prepare it, you write this down and put it in with the folder for the next time you pick it up.  What this does is sets unconscious triggers in your mind and your mind starts to work on the report without you doing anything.  It keeps it fresh in your mind and when you sit down to do the report a lot of the work has already been done, without you even knowing it all because you’ve done a little pre-preparation.

Preparation

So the dishes have been rinsed half an hour before they are due to be washed.  The next stage is preparation.  This involves making sure all the cups are emptied before washing, any bowls have been rinsed, the sink is cleaned before washing , all the dishes are grouped together and the right amount of hot water and washing up liquid is put in before starting.

This preparation is applied to any task.  It is a vital component of reducing any stress when starting a task.  You get everything ready before starting any task.  I work as a homeless tenancy support worker and I see about 30 clients week who are at various stages of homelessness.  My week is prioritised and I see the ones who need a lot of work done on a Monday and Tuesday and I prepare any paperwork that they might need done or any information they might need before going to see them.  This could involve filling out a benefits form, getting more information on an education course, or helping them with an application for funding for furniture.  Then I group the clients together in order of area as I have to cover an area of possibly 100 square miles in a week, grouping them makes it quicker and easier to get through all the work required. Every single task in the world requires preparation, if no preparation is done then time, money and energy is wasted which causes undue stress.  I always leave about 90 minutes per day in case of emergencies and for writing notes.

The task

Now it’s time for the dishes to be washed.  These are done in groups; cutlery first, plates, cups, glasses and then pots and pans.  Grouping makes them easier to stack and quicker to get through.  Each dish is washed and then rinsed to make sure there is no dirt, if there’s still a little dirt it is then washed and rinsed again.  To make the task a little less of a chore I remember playing games in my head when washing dishes.  I used to play cutlery Olympics whereby all the cutlery was  put in the sink and I wanted to see if the knifes, forks or spoons would win the gold medal i.e. what one would finish being washed first, there were four possible winners as the spoons had teaspoons in them as well. I always willed for the underdog and hoped the teaspoons would win, I don’t know why but the teaspoons always used to come last and the knifes or forks used to win.

When writing articles I use the same method as above.  I group my writing tasks on subject.  So if I have 5 articles to write and two of them are on self help, two on property, and one on making money online, I group the and write them in order of groups.  I also find photos to go with each.  To make the task more interesting I try and finish as quickly as I can without compromising on quality.  I then re-read the articles and make sure they are okay and feel okay to publish.  This often involves, in fact, always, involve a little re-writing.  I then publish them to various blogs, or compile an ebook or send out to a newsletter group.

Post task

The dishes have now all been washed and rinsed and stacked on the rack.  It’s time for a cleanup.  This involves cleaning any water and soap bubbles off the sink area, cleaning the sink out and rinsing out the sink.  Voila dishes are done in record time and the forks have won the gold medal again.

Going back to writing articles, after I have completed checked, and published  them I always save the files to somewhere I can find them quickly and easily.  I also answer any queries via email on the various articles or any blog responses, although I have become a bit lax with this lately.  I then sit back and chill out knowing I have done a good job and done it to the best of my ability.

Now, go and get the dishes done!